A company’s cash position reflects its ability to meet financial obligations without having to take on debt or sell assets. Properly managing a cash position can help businesses avoid tying up working capital that could be used for other purposes. The best liquidity management solution consolidates data from various systems and banks. It also supports physical or notionally concentrating balances and streamlines intercompany interest settlement and tracking.
Proactive Budgeting
With regulatory scrutiny on balance sheet practices intensifying, the need for effective liquidity management has never been greater. Whether a company is struggling with interest rate volatility, credit risk or deposit run-off, having the right tools and processes in place is crucial to ensuring long-term profitability. One of the best ways to mitigate a deteriorating liquidity position is to budget for future needs on an ongoing basis. This includes a focus on cash culture, a reliable cash flow forecast model and open communication with executives, boards and capital structure constituents.
It is also important to establish flexible payment terms with suppliers and vendors. This can include offering prompt-payment discounts and using a centralized bank account administration platform that simplifies data entry, enabling quicker reconciliation. Similarly, companies can use a treasury workstation solution to offer a variety of digital payment methods to customers and drive cost optimization through reduced fees and faster processing times. This can help companies improve working capital and reduce the need for reliance on external funding.
Efficient Invoicing
Liquidity management solution involves monitoring and planning cash inflows and outflows to ensure that your business has enough money to cover daily expenses and meet short-term financial commitments. It includes reducing operational costs, streamlining payment processes and optimizing working capital. Efficient invoicing is a key element of liquidity management, as it ensures that clients pay their invoices on time. A timely invoicing process also helps minimize customer support requests and delays. You can also encourage early payments by offering discounts or other incentives, and by providing multiple ways for customers to pay.
Streamline your payment and receivables processes with a digital platform that provides a seamless end-to-end experience for you and your customers. Achieve greater control, visibility and optimization with solutions that support global connectivity, currency optimization and account structuring. Get a complete picture of your cash position with rolling cash positioning and centralized bank account and signatory management. Increase cash efficiency and optimize operating capital with automated reconciliation and debt and investment settlement.
Effective Collections Management
An effective collections management strategy involves streamlining accounts payable and accounts receivable processes to reduce expenses and short-term debt. It also includes analyzing and selecting liquid assets, such as short-term investments, commercial paper, bank lines of credit, or short-term loans, that may be available to bridge cash flow gaps. When treasurers are faced with a liquidity shortage, they must determine how to liquidate their short-term assets and long-term investments in order to maintain an adequate level of liquidity. The process of doing this requires balancing the risks associated with each liquidity option and selecting the one that best meets the company’s risk tolerance.
Managing the liquidity of a multi-national enterprise is challenging. A treasury management system that automates reporting eliminates the need for manual data collection and consolidates cash-relevant information into one source of truth across regions. This allows executives to easily generate end-of-day reports and projections without consuming too much time or resources. Moreover, it facilitates compliance reporting for a broader range of stakeholders.
Maintaining A Strong Cash Position
A company’s profitability can suffer if it does not have enough cash in reserve to pay its financial obligations. A lack of funds may result in the need to borrow money or sell assets, both of which can have a negative impact on operations and even put a company out of business.
A good bank cash management software will provide the CFO and corporate treasury team with full visibility into the company’s current and future cash flow. It will allow for the creation, deletion and modification of liquidity structures with a set of rules that can be tailored to the specific needs of each organization. It should also offer a variety of reporting options and provide user profiles with varying levels of access to sensitive information.
Conclusion
Make your liquidity work smarter with a solution that streamlines recordkeeping, improves forecasting and liquidity planning, combines balances, creates investment income, and optimizes treasury operations. Fifth Third offers a suite of innovative treasury management services that simplify recordkeeping, improve forecasting and liquidity planning, and combine balances to maximize working capital.
